VZCZCXYZ0005
RR RUEHWEB

DE RUEHEG #4414/01 1971335
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 161335Z JUL 06
FM AMEMBASSY CAIRO
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 9968
INFO RUEHXK/ARAB ISRAELI COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS CAIRO 004414 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
NSC FOR MIKE SINGH 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM KDEM EG
SUBJECT: EGYPT: AYMAN NOUR LETTER TO PRESIDENT BUSH 
 
 
Sensitive but Unclassified. 
 
¶1. (SBU)  The following letter to President Bush from Ayman 
Nour (imprisoned leader of the Ghad Party) was delivered to 
poloff on July 15 by the driver of Gameela Ismail, Nour's 
wife.  The letter was translated from Arabic by Embassy 
staff.  Text of the translation follows: 
 
Dear President, 
 
I write to you from behind uncouth bars and large walls, as 
large as the injustice, fraud, and punishment that I have 
been subjected to.  Perhaps, if I had been somewhere else, I 
would have been happy to begin my letter by congratulating 
you on your 60th birthday, which we consider here the age at 
which one can start his political life and think of having 
political ambitions.  For before that, ambition is a crime 
punishable by prison, exemplary punishment, and the penalty 
of political execution because you were hasty in wanting 
something before its time.  And the criterion is of course 
your peers and competitors, most of whom have hit the ceiling 
of their 80,s and sometimes 90's. 
 
Dear Sir, 
 
I was not hasty or overly ambitious when I ran in the first 
presidential elections, which may be the last for me, because 
I did not measure up my age to the acknowledged and 
acceptable age in Egypt.  Instead, I looked at the world 
around me, to you, to Blair, to the many other figures, that 
I thought my country deserved.  I imagined that your January 
2005 speech during the State of Union was addressed to my 
generation of liberal reformers in all the countries that 
suffered for years from your support for regimes that are 
both chronic and addicted to dictatorship and coercion. 
 
I believed what I heard about "transformational diplomacy", 
and I did not realize that it meant a transformation, due to 
regional interests that we paid the price for in the past, 
from what we had understood to be constants; and it seems 
that it is the destiny of reformers to continue to pay the 
bills forever! 
 
And here I am in prison hearing again news about the return 
of the "Strategic Dialogue" and a visit by three officials in 
the next few hours.  And I realize that history repeats 
itself.  For when the last of the Egyptian peoples, 
demonstrations revolts were happening in 1919, the 
demonstrators were chanting for the spiritual and 
intellectual leader of the revolution Saad Zaghloul, while 
chanting at the same time for Mr. Wilson who said the same 
thing you said in January 2005 when he declared the Twelve 
Principles, the most important of which were the right of 
Egyptians to determine their destiny.  But my forefathers 
were stunned by Mr. Wilson,s sudden recognition of the 
British Protection of Egypt, and because they did not know of 
"transformational diplomacy" which the young Secretary Rice 
declared upon reaching her position ) and maybe even before 
that - they were shocked and their chants for Wilson were 
turned against him. 
 
Dear Mr. President, 
 
I have endured since January 2005 until July 2006 the brunt 
of presenting a young and promising reformist project, 
lonesome except for the people,s support, empty-handed in 
the face of those who have everything: money, power, media, 
jail, law, and institutions.  But my faith in my country and 
its sacred right in the rotation of power and my faith that I 
am a one-hundred percent Egyptian project that came out of 
the womb of this nation and for it.  I did not hesitate one 
moment to break the monopoly and the lie that the only 
alternative to "them" (the Egyptian government) is terrorism. 
 I tolerated the President announcing ) after your State of 
the Union speech of Jan 2005 - in a public interview with 
writers and journalists that I had received $70 million to 
compete with him!  I tolerated being stigmatized by that 
which I have not committed and having my reputation and 
dignity assassinated, and having his (Mubarak) media 
propagate ) even until now - that I am an American product, 
financed and endorsed by America, and you know that I am not, 
and that not one court hearing in my trial which the media 
broadcasted was bereft of an insinuation or a declaration of 
this accusation.  I had imagined that running in the 
presidential elections without money or support from the 
state and without the ability to spend one-percent of what 
"they" spent and coming in second ) despite everything that 
happened - is a testimony of innocence insofar as my 
financial status, and in quashing the lie of the $70 million 
which the President personally propagated, and I do not know 
where from he came up with it, though it is flagrantly fake 
and severely nave, but in our country when the president 
says something, it is the truth.  At least amongst his men 
and the monopolized media. 
 
And you can imagine that the raiding of my house and my 
arrest was basically aimed at finding the sum in my paperwork 
after they failed to find it in banks, but it did not occur 
to them ) because the President was the one who said - that 
it was a big lie. 
 
And now, Sir, that I have paid a huge price for my naivete, 
and for believing that we cannot go from bad to worse, 
because the truth is that it can. A "tailored" court issued a 
sentence imprisoning me for five years and depriving me of 
all my political rights for 11 years(!) and back then, it was 
said: "You have a Cassation Court to go to".  And on May 18, 
the court hearing was a new farce, amidst a security siege 
and prevention of my lawyers.  A judge was selected to try 
the judges and myself on the same day, at the same court, to 
uphold the ruling against me.  And now the only hope is for 
the President to issue a Presidential Pardon in accordance 
with Article 149 of the Egyptian Constitution, which allows 
him that right. 
 
Albeit, the President is not concerned with my release, and 
this position seemed very clear when 110 members of 
Parliament submitted to him a request last month asking that 
a Presidential Pardon be issued, but he did not answer them! 
And now, in light of conditions which are far from humane, 
and which deprive me of all my rights as a prisoner - such as 
writing, corresponding and being cuffed for intervals close 
to 13 hours! -  I lose every day part of my life and feel 
like a clear and specific target especially since I am 
diabetic and hypertensive, though I am only 41 years old. 
 
Today "they" pressure my party, so that a group close to 
Gamal "the son" can usurp power.  They besiege our newspaper, 
our only gateway, and they set on fire to my electoral 
premises a few weeks ago and arrested a group of my 
supporters and so far continue the retaliation series which 
even amounted to depriving me of medical treatment, that I 
had to perform surgery on myself without anesthesia! 
 
Maybe all these things seem small, and you may see them as 
trivial, and I indeed see them as trivial and am willing to 
endure them and more, if they were the price for an upcoming 
reform and a freedom that we as a great nation deserve. 
Unfortunately, everything that has happened and is happening 
to me, is used to terrify anyone who thinks of doing what I 
did.  What is happening to me impounds hope, tomorrow, and 
the future. 
 
Unfortunately, I will not ask you for anything for me, though 
I believe in your ability ) after God,s - in doing it.  But 
I am asking you to maintain the hope for coming generations 
that I dream will not have to see what I am seeing now. 
 
 
Dr Ayman Nour 
July 12, 2006 
 
End text. 
 
JONES